For the last two chapters he uses “quiddity / what-ness / mahiya/” term of Avicenna, and claims that they are monotheistic. So he separates the first chapter of Mishkat from the others, understands it in terms of ontology, and claims that it is monistic. The most basic argument of Treiger is that al-Ghazali adopted Avicenna’s metaphysical system after reforming and re-naming it. According to the second passage, by contrast, God is the Lord and Creator ( I turn my face as a true believer to Him who created the heavens and the earth) and while the divinity of the intermediary ‘lord’ is rejected their existence is never denied – hence monotheism.” Furthermore, he argues that this two approaches are interrelated and by them al-Ghazali tries to combine philosophy and Sufism by substantiating Sufis’ ideas philosophically and rejecting ones that he sees wrong. “… according to the first passage, God is the only true existent, the other existents possessing only borrowed and metaphorical existence – hence monism. According to Treiger, the first part of the book is related to the former and the second and third parts are to the latter. In his article, Alexander Treiger argues that al-Ghazali in The Niche of Lights represents both monistic and monotheistic approaches. ARGUMENTS OF TREIGER AND THEIR EVALUATION (page number)” format and for the latter “chapter, page, paragraph number” format. For page numbers of the former I will use “p. I will mention these sources once in the footnotes and then just showing numbers instead of repeating the same names.
Since I could not found works related to this specific issue I will depend on Treiger’s article and al-Ghazali’s book. After doing that I will present an analysis of the book Mishkat by considering it in totality and show that al-Ghazali argues monotheism rather than monism. I will criticize his methodology, and show other three problematic aspects of his arguments. However, I think, this argument is wrong and in this article I will try to prove my claim.įirst, I will mention Treiger’s arguments and then show why they are problematic and wrong. Based on this, he argues that al-Ghazali was a monist. He tries to understand ontological perspective of al-Ghazali by analyzing his book The Niche of Light (Miskat al-Anwar) and making comparisons and contrasts between that book and other works of al-Ghazali and Avicenna’s ideas as well. The article “Monism and Monotheism” of Alexander Treiger is one of them. Since al-Ghazali is a key figure in Islamic thought tradition there are countless works on his ideas and identity. Otherwise we might be misled and mislead others. Therefore when we are to interpret al-Ghazali’s books we have to consider these and the totality of the book. To do this, he first explains necessary concepts for understanding what he says.
The Niche of Lights is one of his books in which he interprets the inward meanings of the “Light verse” and “Veil hadith” besides their outward meanings. He wrote several books to defend Islam and substitute it by philosophical methodology without ignoring the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Al-Ghazali is one of the leading figures in Islamic thought tradition who evaluated Sufism on philosophical grounds.